Monday, March 31, 2014

Why are fault lines and volcanoes all over North and South America
suddenly waking up? Are we moving into a time when major earthquakes and
volcanic eruptions will become much more common?

For the past several decades, we have been extremely fortunate to have
experienced a period of extremely low seismic activity along the west
coast of the United States. You see, the west coast lies right along
the infamous Ring of Fire.

Approximately 75 percent of all the volcanoes in the world are on the
Ring of Fire, and approximately 90 percent of all global earthquakes
occur along the Ring of Fire.

Scientists tell us that it is inevitable that "the Big One"
will hit California someday, but people have gotten very apathetic
about this because things have been so quiet out there for so many
years.

Well, now it appears that things are changing in a big way - and not
just along the California coast. The following are 12 signs that
something big is happening to the earth's crust under North and South
America...

#1 The 5.1 earthquake that shook Los Angeles on Friday was the worst earthquake that the city had seen in many years.

#11 There have been several dozen earthquakes in Peru over the past month, including a 6.3 earthquake that made headlines all over the globe.

#12 Earlier this month, the northern coast of Chile was hit by more than 300 earthquakes in a seven day stretch. 41 of those earthquakes were stronger than magnitude 4.5.

Fortunately, the quake that hit Los Angeles on Friday did not cause too
much lasting injury. But it sure did shake people up. The following is
how the Los Angeles Times described the damage...

The quake, centered near La Habra, caused furniture to tumble, pictures
to fall off walls and glass to break. Merchandise fell off store
shelves, and there were reports of plate glass windows shattered.

In Brea, several people suffered minor injuries during a rock slide that
overturned their car. Fullerton reported seven water main breaks.
Carbon Canyon Road was closed.

Residents across Orange and Los Angeles counties and the Inland Empire
reported swinging chandeliers, fireplaces dislodging from walls and lots
of rattled nerves. The shake caused a rock slide in Carbon Canyon,
causing a car to overturn, according to the Brea Police Department.

Why this particular earthquake is of such concern is because it occurred
along the Puente Hills fault line. According to one seismologist, this
is the fault line that would be most likely to "eat L.A."...

Experts said that the earthquakes occurred on the Puente Hills thrust
fault, which stretches from the San Gabriel Valley to downtown Los
Angeles.

Last night's quake was shallow, which 'means the shaking is very
concentrated in a small area,' said Caltech seismologist Egill Hauksson.

Hauksson revealed that the earthquake was unusual because the 5.1 quake was preceded by the weaker foreshock.

Scientists such as Hauksson are very concerned about the Puente Hills fault because it runs directly under downtown Los Angeles.

'This is the fault that could eat L.A.,' seismologist Sue Hough told The LA Times in 2003.

Video simulations of a rupture on the
Puente Hills fault system show how energy from a quake could erupt and
be funneled toward L.A.'s densest neighborhoods, with the strongest
waves rippling to the west and south across the Los Angeles Basin.

According to estimates by the USGS and Southern California Earthquake
Center, a massive quake on the Puente Hills fault could kill from 3,000
to 18,000 people and cause up to $250 billion in damage. Under this
worst-case scenario, people in as many as three-quarters of a million
households would be left homeless.

For years, we have watched as the rest of the Ring of Fire has been absolutely ravaged by major seismic events.

We all remember the earthquakes that caused the Indonesian tsunami of 2004 and the Japanese tsunami of 2011.

And the world mourned when major earthquakes devastated New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Japan and the Philippines.

Scientists assured us that it was only a matter of time before the west
coast started to become seismically active again, and now it is
happening.

If you live on the west coast, I hope that you will consider these things very carefully.

Just because the earth under your feet has been relatively quiet for a
very long time does not mean that it will always be that way.

Something big appears to be happening to the earth's crust, and you
won't want to be in the "danger zone" when things finally break loose.

The world is not flat. The Titanic was sinkable after all. Dewey never
defeated Truman. Nixon was indeed a crook. Al Gore did not invent the
internet. WMDs were never found in Iraq. Benghazi was not caused by an
anti-Muslim film. Question more with RT America.

For over a decade, residents of the small town of Mossville, Louisiana,
have been reporting numerous cases of premature death, disease and
cancer. A new plot by a large chemical plant looks to finish them off,
paying 80 percent or more of the residents to leave the town, which
could nearly wipe Mossville off the map.

The town consists of about 375 homes, occupied primarily by about 500 African American residents.

According
to the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory, these 14 chemical plants release
thousands of pounds of carcinogens, such as benzene and vinyl chloride,
near Mossville each year, filling the air and soil with inflammatory
toxins that can accumulate in the tissues of people.

One
resident, Dorothy Felix, belongs to a local environmental group that has
asked the government to intervene for health reasons, but shuttering
the plants and initiating cleanup efforts is a hard concept to bear. The
very serious and humbling reality of the situation is hard to confess.

At one point, residents appealed to an international court, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. A 2002 documentary, Blue Vinyl, highlights the town's dilemma, showing the toxic consequences of the chemical manufacturing plants.Even
evidence can't persuade official action. According to a 1998 study by
the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the blood
of 28 Mossville residents was tested and contained dioxin levels three times higher
than the national average. Follow-up blood tests in 2001 showed similar
results, reaffirming how dangerous these plants are based on their
proximity, as the byproducts penetrate residents' cells and accumulate.
The town has basically been a horrid science experiment, as many have died off or come down seriously ill in the past decade.

New chemical plant to wipe small Louisiana town off the map

While the Mossville residents look for help, a newer, larger chemical plant is making preparations to take over the town.
The new 21-billion-dollar project, initiated by a South African
chemical giant named Sasol, is set to overtake the region, which could
ultimately wipe Mossville off the map.

Supported by $2 billion in state incentives, the chemical plant
is set to buy out 80 percent of those still living in the region. The
chemical plant, which is expected to be the largest in the Western
Hemisphere, is estimated to bring in $46.2 billion in economic benefits
in the first year, providing new jobs and opportunities.

But many
residents of the Mossville community are at odds with the takeover,
even though their homes are set to be bought off at 160 percent of
appraised value. They are especially angry to see their town be seized
at the hands of a chemical plant.

New plant estimated to pump out an astonishing 10 million cubic tons of greenhouse gases yearly

While
many business leaders and politicians welcome the plant due to its
economic potential, the income potential doesn't justify the
environmental and health damages that will surely be hammered out into
the people in coming years. An analysis conducted by the Louisiana
Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) in February 2014 stated that
the chemical plant "will result in significant net emissions increases,"
which will include greenhouse gases, promethium, sulfur oxide, nitric oxide and carbon monoxide.

The analysis estimates that the new plant alone will add more than 10 million cubic tons of greenhouse gases per year to the atmosphere.
An Exxon-Mobil refinery only puts out a little over half that amount.
So the negative impact to the air quality of the entire region may be
compromised to extents unimaginable.

But that probably won't stop
the project from going forward, as SASOL has cleared requirements set
by the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. Now the facility waits to be
erected on three square miles near Mossville, as residents prepare to be
forced out in a massive buyoff.

"That's the thing that hurts,"
says Dorothy Felix, a seventh-generation Mossville resident and
community activist. "I'm going to leave all of this behind, a place that
I love so much, a place that I grew up, a place that I saw go from rags
to riches. Now it's about to go to nothing but the plants."

Sunday, March 30, 2014

The world loves its cell phones - so much so that there are more cell phones on this planet
than people! While these technological devices can offer incredible
service and ease in a hectic, modern world, they can also be a serious
health hazard.

Cell phones emit radiofrequency energy, a form of
non-ionizing radiation. Our bodies absorb this radiation and have a
difficult time processing it – leading to numerous bodily complications.
One study found that 10 years of cellphone use resulted in an average 290% increased risk of brain tumor development. Interestingly, the tumor development was found on the side of the head in which the cellphone was most used.

And
while everyone’s soft tissues are especially (negatively) affected by
cell phone use, due to developing organs, lower bone density of the
skull, lower body weight, and a less effective blood brain barrier,
children are very vulnerable to cell phone radiation.

It is easy to see why protecting yourself from cell phone radiation
is more important than ever. Below are 10 tips for reducing exposure.

Protecting Against Radiation

1. Use the speakerphone on
your cell phone when you can have a public conversation, or hook your
cell phone up to an earphone or headphones to keep it as far from you as
possible while still talking on it.

2. Keep your phone charged up.
When the bars are low on your cell phone it is working harder to
capture a signal from the radio towers, which means that the radiation
it emits is even greater. Only make calls when your signal is strong.
Consider texting when you can’t charge your phone.

3. Text instead of talk. This pings the cell phone towers for seconds rather than minutes and minimizes your radiation exposure.

4. Don’t talk while you drive.
The constant movement means that your phone is also trying to make
contact with cell phone towers over and over again, increasing its
frequency, and therefore your radiation exposure. But you shouldn’t text
while you drive either – so don’t do anything while driving!

5. Look for low-radiation emitting phones. There is a list of the 20 best phones for low-radiation emissions, here. The Samsung Galaxy Note is at the top of the list – sorry iPhone users!

6. Go old school.
Use a landline. If you are under the age of 20, you might scoff at this
suggestion, but landlines don’t expose you to radiation. Wait to talk
to your BF at your grandmother’s house on her old wall phone. Your brain
will thank you.

7. Don’t put the cell phone to your ear until a call connects. Dial on speaker phone and then if you must talk straight into the phone, only talk once your end-user picks up.

8. Minimize use.
Talk less on your phone and you will be exposed to less radiation. I
know this is difficult for some of us, but when you can have your
conversations in person. I recently took a vacation for an entire week
and couldn’t use my cell phone at all. After the first day I had
technology withdrawal since I was so used to having a phone in my hand,
but after that, it was remarkably peaceful not to have to respond to
every little thing within minutes.

9. Keep your cell phone far away
from you while sleeping or simply not using your cell phone. There is
no reason for it to be close to you if you aren’t using it unless you’re
expecting a call – especially if you keep it on sound, not vibrate.

"It is all working quite well for the rich and
powerful. In the US, for example, tens of millions are unemployed,
unknown millions have dropped out of the workforce in despair, and
incomes as well as conditions of life have largely stagnated or
declined. But the big banks, which were responsible for the latest
crisis, are bigger and richer than ever, corporate profits are breaking
records, wealth beyond the dreams of avarice is accumulating among those
who count, labor is severely weakened by union busting and "growing
worker insecurity," to borrow the term Alan Greenspan used in explaining
the grand "success" of the economy he managed."

Balcombe village in the UK has seen loud and
raucous protests against gas drilling, but it's real solution is as
silent as the sound

The small village of Balcombe has been at the epicenter of the battle
against hydraulic fracture gas drilling in the UK since last year when
fiery locals and activated environmentalists converged to stage dramatic
rallies and blockades against attempts to drill exploratory wells in
the region.

But now—though the protests have died down and the drilling company
Cuadrilla has at least temporarily puts its drilling hopes on hold—a new
energy collaborative in the town is making a new bold statement about
the energy system it wants to see.

Police
officers try to break a human chain formed by anti-fracking protesters
at Balcombe last July. (Photograph: Tony Kershaw/Rex Features)

The local group of villagers, under the name REPOWERBalcombe,
has launched a community project to put rooftop solar panels on homes,
barns, and other buildings in order to generate the "equivalent of 100%
of Balcombe’s electricity demand through community owned, locally
generated renewable energy."

Their plan at the moment, according to the Guardian,
is to raise an initial "£300,000 in a community share offering for six
solar arrays on roofs in and around the village that will supply 7.5% of
the village's power demand."

In the longer term, however, the group hopes solar will provide all of the village's total electricity demand.

Championing the effort, their allies at Friends of the Earth-UK, say
the idea is exactly what's needed in order to adequately fight the
fossil fuel companies themselves and the energy and economic systems
they now dominate.

“People don’t need to accept risky fracking on their doorsteps," says
FOE campaigner Brenda Pollack. "It’s great to see community energy
initiatives like this that enable local residents to produce their own
clean and safe power, and earn themselves an income too.”

And Tony Bosworth, writing on the FOE-UK blog, argues
that this kind of proactive protest which says "Yes" to alternative
energy is just one more way of saying "No" to fossil fuels. He writes:

We need to show that the claims made by the fracking industry and its supporters don’t stand up to scrutiny:
it’s very unlikely to cut energy bills, it’s not clean (the academic
jury is still out on whether shale gas is cleaner than coal, but the
bottom line is that it's still a fossil fuel) and it involves big risks
for the local environment and human health. In short, fracking is a risk
we simply do not need to take, and cannot afford to take.

We need to show that there are alternatives. And that’s where
Balcombe is showing the way. The local community isn’t just saying no to
fracking – it has launched Repower Balcombe, an initiative to install solar panels on village roofs to generate all the electricity the village needs.

Alongside community solutions we also need big-scale renewables, and that’s why the announcement of a £300 million investment in offshore wind manufacturing in Hull was a real boost.

And we need to make our voice heard by politicians. Non-violent
protest is a part of this, and Friends of the Earth supports the right
of people to protest peacefully.

It’s not just happening in Balcombe. Wherever unconventional fossil
fuel exploration is being proposed, local people are protesting - in Lancashire, Salford, Nottinghamshire and
many other places. And it’s great when our elected politicians
themselves have the courage of their convictions to join the protests.

We know what the real answers to our energy crisis are: energy
efficiency and renewables. But getting these involves saying no to false
solutions such as shale gas.

Let’s hope that the example of Balcombe – opposition to fossil fuel
extraction coupled with support for community-based renewables – spreads
far and wide.

The study, authored by Professor Enrique A Navarro, concluded that the severity of such symptoms directly correlated to cell tower exposure levels.
In other words, the closer a person lives to a cell tower, the greater
the severity of their symptoms. This was true regardless of race, income
level and other demographics.

Cell towers, of course, broadcast
and receive electromagnetic switching signals. Human biology -- and the
brain in particular -- relies on electro-biochemical pathways for
healthy function. Many scientists have long suspected that chronic
exposure to low levels of EMF pollution (electropollution) may interfere
with healthy functioning of the brain and body. This latest research
adds yet more support to that alarming idea.

It's not your imagination: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is real

Electromagnetic
hypersensitivity has long been dismissed as non-existent by some
doctors and industry-funded scientists. After all, if EMF pollution from
cell towers really does harm public health, then the implications are
truly massive, both economically and in terms of human suffering.

But electromagnetic hypersensitivity is a genuine phenomenon. People are not "inventing" side effects or symptoms. As Navarro writes in the study:

The
term electromagnetic hypersensitivity has been recently introduced in
discussions attributing symptoms to exposure to EMFs. A review of this
topic in 2010 found that 8 of the 10 studies evaluated through PubMed
had reported increased prevalence of adverse neurobehavioral symptoms or
cancer in populations living at distances < 500 m from [cell phone
towers].

Importantly, all these symptoms were recorded in people living near cell phone towers whose broadcast signal strength meets current safety guidelines. As the study author points out, this most likely means current government guidelines on cell phone towers are inadequate to protect the public. Revising such guidelines could have drastic implications for the nationwide telecommunications infrastructure.

By
the way, people who live fewer than 500 meters from cell phone towers
appear to be especially at risk of electromagnetic interference with
brain function. Because electropollution strength is determined by the inverse square of the distance, a person who moves twice as close to a cell tower experiences four times the radiation.

190,000 cell phone towers and growing

There are currently over 190,000 cell phone towers across the United States.(2)

Their
typical "maximum range" is over 21 miles, meaning their electromagnetic
pollution extends in a sphere with a radius of over 21 miles. (In
reality, this pollution extends indefinitely, but the intensity of it
drops off with the square of the distance.)

The following map shows AT&T coverage areas in orange. If you live inside an orange area, you are currently exposed to cell tower radiation.

People who live within range of two or more cell phone towers experience electropollution from all the towers within a range of 21 miles. This electropollution effect is cumulative.

It
is not known how many Americans live within 21 miles of at least one
cell tower, but given that over half the U.S. population lives in urban
areas, it's safe to assume that at least 150 million -- and more likely
close to 300 million -- Americans are exposed to EMF electropollution
from cell towers.

Modern society increasingly confused, irritable and sleepless

Have
you noticed how the mass public seems increasingly confused and
irritable? A society that once operated with some degree of sanity and
politeness has become largely demented and rude. Mathematical abilities
are nearly lost across the population, as very few people under the age
of 40 can even calculate 15% waiter's tips at a restaurant. The ability
of voters to understand laws, liberties, freedom and even the structure
of government is almost entirely lost in nations where cell phone towers
are ubiquitous.

Given this recent research revealing the
negative impact of cell phone radiation of human brain function, it
would be incredibly irresponsible to fail to consider how cell tower
radiation alters healthy brain function and promotes confusion and
irritability. As more scientists look into this issue, we may indeed
find that the fall of American civilization is being accelerated by electromagnetic pollution that leads to disastrous cognitive consequences across the population.

Just how far down do you think the deepest caves on the planet go? As
far down as the Washington Monument is tall? How about the Eiffel Tower?

A project dubbed "The Call of the Abyss" took explorers to the deepest
cave on Earth, and they ventured down to a breathtaking depth of nearly
2,200 meters - around 1.3 miles.

The depth of the cave, named "Krubera-Varonya," is fascinating, but the
winding length of the entire cave system also boggles the mind. Located
in the Arabika Massif, of the Western Caucasus in Abkhazia, Georgia, it
extends for 13.432 kilometers, or roughly 8.3 miles.

To date, Krubera-Varonya is the only cave known on the planet that plunges past 2,000 meters in depth.

The vast cave is the hyphenated name for the first Russian explorer to find the cavernous path, and for the bats that have been found within.

Friday, March 28, 2014

A Canadian high school student named Bronwyn Delacruz never imagined
that her school science project would make headlines all over the
world. But that is precisely what has happened. Using a $600 Geiger
counter purchased by her father, Delacruz measured seafood bought at
local grocery stores for radioactive contamination. What she discovered
was absolutely stunning. Much of the seafood, particularly the
products that were made in China, tested very high for radiation. So is
this being caused by nuclear radiation from Fukushima? Is the seafood
that we are eating going to give us cancer and other diseases? The
American people deserve the truth, but as you will see below, the U.S.
and Canadian governments are not even testing imported seafood for
radiation. To say that this is deeply troubling would be a massive
understatement.

In fact, what prompted Bronwyn Delacruz to conduct her science
project was the fact that the Canadian government stopped testing
imported seafood for radiation in 2012…

Alberta high-school student Bronwyn Delacruz loves sushi,
but became concerned last summer after learning how little food
inspection actually takes place on some of its key ingredients.
The Grade 10 student from Grande Prairie said she was shocked to
discover that, in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in
Japan, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) stopped testing imported foods for radiation in 2012.

And what should be a major red flag for authorities is the fact that the seafood with the highest radiation is coming from China…

Armed with a $600 Geiger counter bought by her dad,
Delacruz studied a variety of seafoods – particularly seaweeds – as part
of an award-winning science project that she will take to a national
fair next month.

“Some of the kelp that I found was higher than what the International
Atomic Energy Agency sets as radioactive contamination, which is 1,450 counts over a 10-minute period,” she said. “Some of my samples came up as 1,700 or 1,800.”

Delacruz said the samples that “lit up” the most were products from China that she bought in local grocery stores.

It is inexcusable that the Canadian government is not testing this
seafood. It isn’t as if they don’t know that it is radioactive. Back
in 2012, the Vancouver Sun reported that cesium-137 was being found in a very high percentage of the fish that Japan was selling to Canada…

• 73 percent of the mackerel

• 91 percent of the halibut

• 92 percent of the sardines

• 93 percent of the tuna and eel

• 94 percent of the cod and anchovies

• 100 percent of the carp, seaweed, shark and monkfish

So why was radiation testing for seafood shut down in Canada in 2012?

Someone out there needs to answer some very hard questions.

Meanwhile, PBS reporter Miles O’Brien has pointed out the extreme
negligence of the U.S. government when it comes to testing seafood for
Fukushima radiation. The following comes from a recent EcoWatch article…

O’Brien also introduces us to scientists from the Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institute who have been testing waters around the
reactors—as well as around the Pacific Rim—to confirm the levels of
Fukushima fallout, especially of cesium.

These scientists are dedicated and competent. But they are also being
forced to do this investigation on their own, raising small amounts of
money from independent sources. They were, explains lead scientist Ken
Buesseler, turned down for even minimal federal support by five agencies key to our radiation protection.
Thus, despite a deep and widespread demand for this information, no
federal agency is conducting comprehensive, on-the-ground analyses of
how much Fukushima radiation has made its way into our air and oceans.

In fact, very soon after Fukushima began to blow, President Obama
assured the world that radiation coming to the U.S. would be minuscule
and harmless. He had no scientific proof that this
would be the case. And as O’Brien’s eight-minute piece shows all too
clearly, the “see no evil, pay no damages” ethos is at work here. The
government is doing no monitoring of radiation levels in fish, and information on contamination of the ocean is almost entirely generated by underfunded researchers like Buesseler.

It is the job of the authorities to keep us safe, and the Fukushima
nuclear disaster was the worst nuclear disaster in human history.

So why aren’t they doing testing?

Why aren’t they checking to make sure that this radiation is not getting into our food chain?

The Japanese are doing testing off the coast of Japan, and one fish
that was recently caught off the coast of the Fukushima prefecture was
discovered to have 124 times the safe level of radioactive cesium.

So why are all the authorities in North America just assuming that
the fish are going to be perfectly fine on this side of the Pacific?

One test that was conducted in California discovered that 15 out of 15 Bluefin tuna were contaminated with radiation from Fukushima.

So how can the authorities say “don’t worry, just eat the seafood”?

Everyone agrees that a plume of radioactive water has been moving from Fukushima toward the west coast of the United States.

The first radioactive ocean plume released by the
Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster will finally be reaching the
shores of the United States some time in 2014, according to a new study
from the University of New South Wales — a full three or so years after
the date of the disaster.

As concerns over fracking-induced earthquakes mount, regulators from
four US states met for the first time in March to discuss limiting the
risk posed by the controversial practice.

According to Bloomberg News, officials from Ohio, Oklahoma,
Kansas, and Texas are looking to cooperate on the project. The
group reportedly discussed how to strengthen their standards
related to fracking, and is working on establishing similar
monitoring procedures across the states that would prevent
earthquakes from occurring in the future.

“It was a very productive meeting, number one, because it
gave the states the opportunity to get together and talk
collectively about the public interest and the science,”
Gerry Baker, the associate executive director of the Interstate
Oil and Gas Compact Commission, which represents energy states,
told Bloomberg. “It was a good start in coordinating
efforts.”

One rule being considered by Oklahoma, pending the support of the
lawmakers and the governor, would require companies to record
injection well pressure every day rather than every month. If
such a rule is authorized, Oklahoma would be the first state in
the country to require this.

The move to collaborate comes in the wake of a US Geological
Survey study that found the number of earthquakes occurring in
the central United States was six times higher in 2011 than it
was in 2000. In Oklahoma, for example, the state experienced less
than three quakes a year from 1975 – 2008. Since then, there have
been an average of 40 earthquakes every year.

The process of fracking – which involves blasting water, sand,
and other chemicals into layers of rock in order to release gas
and oil – has been highlighted as the likely trigger for the
quakes, since the wastewater is then injected into underground
wells that sometimes cause friction near fault lines.

While state officials are serious about creating new regulations
and procedures to monitor fracking operations and limit quakes,
Dan Whitten of America’s Natural Gas Alliance said the amount of
earthquakes connected to fracking injection wells is minor
compared to how many wells exist.

“There’s close to 150,000 injections wells and the number
where there’s even been a connection suggested is just a
handful,” Whitten said to Bloomberg. “It’s appropriate
that this be addressed at the state level.”

Still, multiple cities and states have begun taking action. As RT
reported earlier this month, Los Angeles became the
largest city in the country to ban fracking, with the prohibition
expected to remain in place until it’s proven the process won’t
harm public safety or contaminate the drinking water. A
co-sponsor of the bill noted the procedure’s connection to
earthquakes, while others have pointed not only to its
environmental consequences, but also to the fact that it uses up
significant amounts of drinking water in a state that’s been
stricken with drought.

According to the Sacramento Bee, “millions of Californians
live in areas threatened by oil industry-induced
earthquakes,” with more than 800 injection wells near
“recently active faults,” including the San Andreas.

Meanwhile, Arkansas has banned fracking in an area known for its
spike in seismic activity, while Ohio has barred wells near fault
lines. Other cities, such as Dallas, have effectively banned
fracking as well, prohibiting it within 1,500 feet of a home,
school, church, and other areas.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Astonished astronomers said Wednesday they had found rings around an
asteroid, the smallest object known to have this feature and only the
fifth after Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The twin rings around a rock called Chariklo were spotted in June
last year as it passed in front of a star, scrutinised by seven
telescopes dotted over a 1,500-kilometre (930-mile) stretch of South
America.

As expected, the star seemed to vanish for a few seconds as Chariklo
blocked its light — a phenomenon known as occultation, an international
team reported in the science journal Nature.

But the mini-eclipse turned out to be much more than the astronomers were expecting.

“A few seconds before, and again a few seconds after the main
occultation, there were two further very short dips in the star’s
apparent brightness,” the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said in a
statement.

“Something around Chariklo was blocking the light!”

It turned out to be two narrow, dense rings — a feature believed to be limited to the four giant planets of our Solar System.

By comparing data from the different sites, the team not only
reconstructed the shape and size of Chariklo itself but also the shape,
width and orientation of its twin halos.

These were seven and three km (4.3 and 1.8 miles) wide respectively,
separated by a nine-km gap. Like Saturn’s rings, Chariklo’s may be
composed of water ice.

“We weren’t looking for a ring and didn’t think small bodies like
Chariklo had them at all, so the discovery, and the amazing amount of
detail we saw in the system, came as a complete surprise,” said Felipe
Braga Ribas of Brazil’s National Observatory.

- Celestial centaur -

Chariklo, a lumpy 250-km-wide rock discovered in 1997 and named after
a water nymph in Greek mythology, orbits the Sun between Saturn and
Uranus, more than a billion kilometres from Earth.

It is a Centaur, a category of celestial bodies that share the
characteristics of comets, which are made of ice and dust and form tails
when they pass near the Sun, and asteroids which are made of metallic
rock, have shorter orbits and tend to cluster in groups.

Centaurs have unstable orbits that cross those of the giant planets
and live for a few million years. Like other “minor planets”, they are
not massive enough for their own gravity to pull them into a
near-spherical shape.

The origin of Chariklo’s rings are a mystery for now, but may be the result of a debris-releasing collision with another body.

“I try to imagine how it would be to stand on the surface of this icy
object… and stare up at a 20-km-wide ring system 1,000 times closer
than the Moon,” said fellow researcher Uffe Grae Jorgensen of the
University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute.

The debris may eventually become welded together into a single,
larger moon orbiting Chariklo — one of the theories for how our own Moon
was formed.

Studying occultations is the only method astronomers have to
determine the size and shape of bodies so far from Earth that even with
the best telescopes they appear as faint points of light.

The rings around Uranus and Neptune were found in the same way, in
1977 and 1984. Galileo, in 1610, became the first person to observe the
brilliant rings of Saturn, while the dusty rings around Jupiter were
first spotted by the US probe Voyager 1 in 1979.

The project leaders have named Chariklo’s rings after the Brazilian
rivers of Oiapoque and Chui, but the epithets have yet to be confirmed
by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

- Planet-like body? -

In a separate study in Nature, astronomers said they had found a
second planet-like body in what was long thought to be an uninhabited
zone beyond the orbit of Pluto.

The remote area, said to represent the outer edge of our Solar
System, is a supposed repository of comets known as the Oort Cloud.

Only one other body, a 1,000-km-diameter dwarf dubbed Sedna, has been
spotted in what is thought to be the inner region of the hypothetical
“cloud”.

The newcomer, spotted by the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory’s four-metre telescope in Chile, has been dubbed 2012 VP.

The point of its orbit closest to the Sun is about 80 astronomical
units (1 AU = the distance from the Sun to Earth). Neptune is the
furthest planet from the Sun at 30 AU.

“2012 VP is the smoking gun for the existence of the inner Oort
Cloud,” Megan Schwamb of the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in
Taipei, wrote in a comment.

Bring us your nerve gases, your blister agents, your horrible weapons of warfare, your wretched refuse of World War II…
This about sums up the decision of leaders in Washington after World
War II when it came time for the American military to dispose of its
arsenal of chemical weapons and those belonging to both the countries it
fought against and alongside.

After the war’s conclusion, the U.S. government buried thousands of
munitions loaded with chemical agents all across the country. These
weapons of mass destruction were part of the U.S. arsenal as well as
those belonging to ally Britain and enemies Germany and Japan.

The bombs and containers were simply dumped in the ground and buried,
without concern for long-term environmental and health consequences.

Alabama is home to the largest of 249 such sites that are located in 40 states. Redstone Arsenal,
a longtime U.S. Army base, sits atop miles of hidden trenches
containing blister agents, choking agents, blood agents and more.

The 38,000-acre base is surrounded by homes, schools, churches and
shopping centers—a city of 200,000 people. It was reported that few
residents are aware of the toxic danger lurking nearby.

A disposal team has been working at Redstone since the 1970s trying to
locate all of the chemical weaponry that is buried beneath 17
six-mile-long trenches. Once those trenches have all been located, the
next step—scheduled to begin in 2019—is to remove the bombs and
containers with great care, due to the uncertainty of the weapons’
condition after being held deep underground for decades. No more than
six munitions can be safely removed each day.

“Even if we tried to do this as fast as anybody could ever get it done,
we’re talking decades and decades,” James Watson, a disposal team
member, told the Los Angeles Times. “This stuff is very
dangerous to dig up. It’ll hurt you. It will blister you up. If you get
that nerve agent on you, it will kill you.”

Redstone’s cleanup is expected to take until at least 2042. The
quantity of weapons: 388,000. Between 20,000 and 25,000 of these are
intact and, once disturbed, may be volatile.

Alabama has a second site, at former Camp Sibert (pdf) near Huntsville, with at least 13 stockpiles of mustard and phosgene gas.

Another of these sites is located in Spring Valley, Virginia, not far
from the White House. Its arsenal features even older chemical
munitions—possibly including mustard and arsenic—manufactured during
World War I.

Several years ago, a vast supply of munitions from World War II was discovered beneath the grounds of Odyssey Middle School in Orlando, Florida. One of the weapons ignited into flames, but didn’t explode, injuring an Army Corps of Engineers
contractor attempting to remove it. More than 200 potentially volatile
explosives were found, most under the school and some near homes in the
surrounding neighborhood. Home values, which were originally in the
$600,000 range, plunged by at least 30%, while banks told homeowners
their residents were worthless to lend against.

The U.S. military also dumped a huge volume of chemical weapons off
both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. There are no plans to clean up
those sites, although Congress has authorized studies to look into it.

In 1958, about a hundred miles offshore of California, the SS William Ralston—loaded
with more than 300,000 mustard gas bombs and 1,500 one-ton containers
of Lewisite, a blistering agent—was scuttled by the U.S military. To
this day it sits beneath nearly 14,000 feet of water just outside of San
Francisco.

Ralston believes the U.S. task of removing 1,300 tons of secured chemical weapons from Syria
for destruction at sea will be something of a breeze compared to the
job here at home. “In Syria, you know where the weapons are and what
they are, and they can move them with a forklift,” Watson told the Times. “Here, we don’t know. We have to go out there and dig them out of the ground … The sheer mass of this stuff is overwhelming.”

This photo obtained March 25, 2014, courtesy of the Washington State
Department of Transportation shows the Stillaguamish dam breach at SR
530, created after the landslide near Oso, Washington, on March 22, 2014
(AFP Photo)

With the death toll in last weekend’s deadly Washington mudslide
likely rising to two dozen, a report commissioned by the US Army Corps
of Engineers well over a decade ago predicted that a catastrophic
landslide in the area was all but inevitable.

Rescue workers continued to dig through viscous muck and debris
under drizzling rain throughout Tuesday near the rural town of
Oso in Snohomish County, Washington. As many as 176 people are
listed as missing three days after a massive mudslide gushed down
a rain-saturated hillside, swallowing a neighborhood after
barreling over a river and a nearby highway.

"Unfortunately we did not find any signs of life today, we
didn't locate anybody alive, so that's the disappointing
part," Reuters cites local fire chief Travis Hots as telling
a media briefing. Hots noted that eight sets of remains had been
found as a result of rescue efforts, though the official death
toll would remain at 16 pending medical examinations.

Officials believe the number of missing could decline, as many of
those believed missing have been double-counted or have not made
friends and family aware of their whereabouts in a timely manner.

Search and rescue operations continued throughout the night and
were set to return to full strength at daybreak.

Meanwhile, a 1999 report filed with the US Army Corps of
Engineers warned of “the potential for a large catastrophic
failure,” the Seattle Times recently reported.

“I knew it would fail catastrophically in a large-magnitude
event,” though not when it would happen, said
geomorphologist Daniel Miller, who was hired to do the study.
“I was not surprised.”

Snohomish County officials have denied knowledge of the study,
while John Pennington, director of the county’s Emergency
Department, said local authorities had done their best to warn
residents of the landside dangers.

Pennington said residents in the area which had long been dubbed
"Hazel Landslide" due to the frequency of such events over the
last half century, "were very aware of the slide
potential," AP reports.

"We've done everything we could to protect them," he
said.

However, according to the Seattle Times, Pennington seemingly
contradicted himself by telling a press conference that the hill
“was considered very safe.”

“This was a completely unforeseen slide. This came out of
nowhere,” he said.

Patricia Graesser, a spokeswoman for the Army Corps of Engineers
in Seattle, said that Miller’s report had not been intended as a
risk assessment, but rather as a feasibility study for ecosystem
restoration.

Asked whether the agency should have done anything with the
information, she told AP: "We don't have jurisdiction to do
anything. We don't do zoning. That's a local
responsibility."

Miller, who also documented the hill’s landslide conditions in a
report written in 1997 for the Washington Department of Ecology
and the Tulalip Tribes, has extensive knowledge of the landform’s
volatile history.

Following the last major landside in the area, which occurred in
2006, Miller was shocked to see new homes being built despite the
inherent risks.

“Frankly, I was shocked that the county permitted any
building across from the river,” he said.

“We’ve known that it’s been failing,” he said of the hill.
“It’s not unknown that this hazard exists.”

Saturday’s landslide was not the first to strike an inhabited
area in the state. In the late 1990s, a slowing moving landslide
destroyed more than 100 houses in the town of Kelso. But the
event in Oso ranks among the deadliest landslides in modern US
history. In 1969, 150 people were killed in landslides and
flooding in Nelson County, Virginia.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

The remnants of the BP oil spill
are still impacting the environment around the Gulf. During a
post-response monitoring survey last month, the Florida Department of
Environmental Protection (FDEP) found 1250 pounds of submerged oil mats
near Pensacola beaches. The discovery was baffling because the area was
surveyed 9 times since the Deepwater Horizon oil in 2010.

In segment FLES2-005, several SRBs were found during the initial survey
of the segment. Most SRBs were recovered as the team continued its
survey. Exceptionally calm conditions allowed the team to survey a few
meters offshore and a submerged oil mat (SOM) was found east of the Fort
Pickens Ranger Station. The SOM measured about 3 meters by 3 meters in
diameter, was up to 15-20 centimeters thick, and was found about 7
meters offshore in water that was about 1 meter deep.
Immediately upon discovery, an NRC report was filed. The team met with
USCG personnel in the field shortly thereafter and the OSRO was deployed
to assist with recovery of the SOM. However, the OSRO’s safety policies
would not allow the crew to go in further than knee-deep water. As a
cooperative effort, FDEP personnel removed product by hand using shovels
provided by the OSRO. As chunks of the SOM were removed by FDEP
personnel, the OSRO began sifting, weighing, and categorizing the
material. By the end of the day, 1,249.56 lb of SOM product was removed
just from a small 3 m x 3 m area.

The FDEP calls the discovery "remarkable" because the area has been surveyed repeatedly since the Deepwater Horizon spill:

What is remarkable about this area is that this segment has been
previously surveyed 9 times by FDEP since the end of the active
Deepwater Horizon response in June 2013. On one previous survey
(December 10, 2013) four yellow Driftcards from the Texas A&M study
were found in this area, indicating that this may be a natural
collection area. The 9 previous surveys of this segment amounted to 32
lb of MC-252 product before today. However, through persistent proactive
monitoring, a significant deposit of MC-252 oil was located and removed
today.

Every year, when temperatures head South for the winter, plumbing
companies work overtime to accommodate a growing number of pipe ruptures
and leaks. The East Coast of the United States has some of the oldest
piping in the country made of materials ranging from wood to lead to
plastic. Infrastructure experts warn that if America's aging piping
problem isn't addressed soon, the cost could skyrocket. RT Correspondent
Meghan Lopez reports.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Roads are considered connectors of human development providing
opportunities for economic success and communication but the flip side of this
network is that it has also brought enormous destruction to our fields and
forests. With forest destruction comes increased human development and
ecological degradation. Recent mapping and modeling has been done to document
and measure forest destruction in an initiative by the Ames Research Center of
NASA and ENN affiliate, Mongabay.

Using satellite imagery to detect deforestation as it is happening
allows the opportunity to measure the deforestation and investigate it
before it expands. Past satellite imagery has revealed the increased
forest depletion in the proximity of new roads.

According to Kriton Arsenis, Greek Member in Parliament (MEP) of the European Parliament, "95% of forest loss
occurs within 50 km of a road. Scientific reports and satellite imagery have
demonstrated road building is a major driver of deforestation, from the Amazon
to Indonesian and Congo Basin forests."

Because of their ability
to store carbon stores, their capacity to prevent floods, and protecting
biodiversity, Arsenis believes that urgent measures are needed to curb
the
construction of roads in forested regions. Further, protection is
critical to the preservation of the environment and the ongoing
struggles with climate change. Arsenis says, "Keeping our last
intact forests free of roads is a cost efficient way to protect the
climate,
halt biodiversity loss and keep illegal traffickers at bay."

William Laurence, a
professor at Australia's James Cook University, sees roads as a gateway to the
destruction of forestland.

"Roads are often
fatal for forests and other native ecosystems," he said. "They open
up a Pandora's Box of environmental problems, such as illegal deforestation, colonization,
hunting, mining, and land speculation."

Presently the European Union
has several rules governing exploitation of forest resources including the EU
Timber Regulation (EUTR), which prohibits selling illegally harvested
timber and its products, but regulations currently contain no road construction legislation in forests.

Roads
are generally constructed to connect isolated communities with the
remainder of the country or support economic development within a remote
area. Juliette Ebélé, spokesperson
for the International Road Transport Union, while admitting the sector's
impact
on deforestation, says, "Road infrastructure and road transport are a
major driver of economic and social development, granting access to
rural or
remote areas, hence bringing about agricultural, business, habitat
opportunities, and so on." Ebélé goes on to say that there should be
policies to protect the environment in the construction of roads
through sensitive areas.

It just goes to show you that sometimes, consensus in science amounts
to a “whole lot of nothing” as this story from Robert Mendick in The
Sunday Telegraph tells us.

Growing crops to make “green” biofuel harms the environment and drives up food prices, IPCC admits in dramatic U-turn

The United Nations will officially warn that growing crops to make
“green” biofuel harms the environment and drives up food prices, The
Telegraph can disclose.

A leaked draft of a UN report condemns the widespread use of biofuels
made from crops as a replacement for petrol and diesel. It says that
biofuels, rather than combating the effects of global warming, could
make them worse.

The draft report represents a dramatic about-turn for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Its previous assessment on climate change, in 2007, was widely
condemned by environmentalists for giving the green light to large-scale
biofuel production. The latest report instead puts pressure on world
leaders to scrap policies promoting the use of biofuel for transport.

Monday, March 24, 2014

Abby Martin features an exclusive interview with investigative
journalist, Greg Palast, discussing his article on TruthDig which
exposes the extent of BP's culpability in the Exxon Valdez oil spill 25
years ago, specifically for not providing adequate safety equipment, a
criminal offense which was repeated in the 2010 Deep Water Horizon
spill.

A devastating mudslide in the state of Washington has killed at least
eight people. Eighteen others are missing as houses were buried under
rubble. The incident prompted the evacuation of a nearby town in case of
a “potentially catastrophic flood event.”

The 45-meter-long landslide in the northwest of Washington state
has decimated the area, swallowing six houses, blocking a main
road and damming a river.

The mudslide struck near the town of Oso, about 90km north of
Seattle at 11:00 am local time (18:00 GMT) on Saturday. The first
rescuers on the scene said they could hear people screaming for
help under the wreckage.

Members of a swift water rescue team look on as an ambulance drives past
after a large mudslide blocked Highway 530 near Oso, Washington March
22, 2014. (Reuters / Jason Redmond)

The local authorities initially reported that two people had been
killed in the incident, but it later emerged that one man died in
hospital of his injuries. Three more people, including a
six-month-old boy are currently in critical condition at
Harborview Medical Center. Rescuers continue to search for any
sign of survivors.

The governor of Washington State, Jay Inslee, tweeted his
condolences to the families affected by the landslide.

Such a tragedy in Oso. On behalf of all Washingtonians, my
condolences to the families who lost loved ones in Snohomish
Co. mudslide today.
— Governor Inslee (@GovInslee) March
22, 2014

"We have people who are yelling for our help, and we are
going to take extreme risks," said Snohomish County Fire
District 21 Chief Travis Hots at a news briefing.

Debris from the mudslide has dammed the Stillaguamish River,
which is threating to flood low-lying areas nearby. Authorities
have told residents and businesses in the towns of Oso and
Stanwood to seek higher ground until Sunday morning.

A spokesperson for Snohomish County told local newspaper, The
Herald, that the landslide had created conditions for a
“catastrophic flood event.”

State geologists are now working on finding the cause of the
landslide. At present local authorities believe that the
principle cause of the incident was the large amount of rainfall
the region has received this month.

Officials survey a large mudslide in this handout photo provided by the
Washington State Police near Oso, Washington March 22, 2014. (Reuters /
Washington State Police / Handout via Reuters)

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